From the Rabbi

Time for a New Tradition?

We lit the candles.  Perhaps we welcomed in the ministering angels by singing Shalom Aleychem.  Some men may have recited the traditional text of Eshet Chayil in praise of their wives; others have relied on their own words of gratitude for their friends and partners.  And the children have been blessed.

We chant Kiddush (sanctification), welcoming in the Sabbath with a prayer of praise that allows our borei p’ri hagafen (creator of the fruit of the vine) to be extended and expanded to express gratitude for all creation and the Sabbath we are about to welcome in.

Time to wash our hands.  Water is the very essence of life and wisdom in Jewish tradition.  Before we say the motzi and break bread, we wash our hands to act like the priests of old.  They, too, washed before they approached the altar.

Our table is an altar of sorts.  It is a holy place in time, a place where we sanctify all that nourishes us – our relationships, our families, our Sabbath rest.

We remove our rings.  We pour water, often from a two-handled cup, over each hand.

One couple I know has the practice of washing their hands together, and replacing their wedding rings as a gift to each other – just as they did when they were married.  It’s one way they sanctify their commitment. They make it anew with their own variation of an ancient Shabbat ritual.

Jewish tradition offers us so very many ways to enrich and sanctify our lives.  Consider taking on a new tradition this Shabbat.

Have a wonderful Shabbat!

Rabbi Barbara

And for those interested, the text of Eshet Chayil…

Eshet Chayil

A Woman of Valor, who can find? She is more precious than corals.
Her husband places his trust in her and profits only thereby.
She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life.
She seeks out wool and flax and cheerfully does the work of her hands.

Let me be upfront: This is not a terribly original move on my part.  Other rabbis routinely send out weekly notes to their congregants.

For a time I rather worried about the fact that everyone’s inbox is so cluttered these days that the last thing I wanted was for you to feel your rabbi was in on the mess-making.

Then I decided that if I named this just right, you would easily be able to recognize what had landed in your email and whether you had time to take out a moment for a little pre-Shabbaty message.

Of course, I hope you will!

Here, then, is my first pre-Shabbat Shabbat-O-Gram.

Once upon a time, a not so long time ago, Jews invited friends to dinner on Friday nights.  The candles were lit, husbands delighted their wives by reciting Eshet Chayyil, A Woman of Valor (a lovely litany of praises from Proverbs 31:10-31), the kids got blessed, and everyone sat down to an awesome meal.  After eating: digesting with the help of merriment, song, and all-round good cheer.

Tomorrow night, on February 17, at 6:30 at McGill Baptist Church, our congregation is holding its first-ever congregational Shabbat dinner – a large-scale version of an old tradition.  Candles will be lit, anyone who wants to can rise to praise their partner, spouse, or good friend, parents will bless their kids, and everyone will sit down to an evening of good food, a bit of song, some silly ice-breakers and a whole lot of schmoozing.  We are offering folks a chance to get to know our congregation at this event and our congregation a chance to know one another better.

Shabbat is about taking sweet moments to acknowledge our blessings and remind ourselves of the goodness of life itself.  Shabbat is about being with each other and learning more about friends and neighbors.  Shabbat is a way to make time holy with laughter, with prayer, with song, with pure fun.  Enjoy your Shabbat by joining in on Shabbat – at Temple Or Olam’s First Congregational Kabbalat Shabbat Dinner!

P.S. Those who haven’t officially signed up can still bring something yummy and join in!  Just let President Judah (jmalin@trimarkusa.com) know if you’re coming so we can make sure we have enough  chairs and tables set out….

Over the years I have come to appreciate how Jewish customs give us time to grieve and to heal.  When we lose someone beloved, we are allowed a week away from the world.  We are not made responsible for meals or for everyday chores.  Those who visit us during shiva, the first seven days of mourning, are reminded not to expect us to  be responsive or even sociable – the rabbis advise the community just to sit with those who mourn, not to try and comfort them, but to witness their grief and to honor it.

Only at the end of the week do we make the first tremulous steps back into the world.  A mourner is gently accompanied outside and taken for a short walk around the block.  The mourner, like someone recovering from illness, is weak and needs support.

For thirty days, during shloshim, mourners are allowed time to feel free from social obligations.  Only after a month, should we expect a mourner to be able to attend celebrations and festivals.  And our liturgy offers mourners a prayer to recite each day for a year.  Those who have recited the Mourner’s Kaddish each day know how it can become a meditation on memory, an acknowledgment of loss.  We mark the yahrzeit of our loss, we remember our beloveds at particular liturgical times each year with a yahrzeit service.  We give ourselves time.

Over a decade ago, long before our congregation came into existence, I experienced medical challenges I struggled with mostly on my own.  Of course, Ralf was my support and my strength.  Still, hardly anyone knew what was happening and I still prefer not to speak of that time.  But what happened left me with fears, particularly around surgery.

So even though a thyroidectomy is not major surgery, and even though I am likely not facing anything terribly threatening to my health, I have been unsettled and uneasy.

I realized, though, that I could rely far more on Jewish tradition than I ever imagined possible when there was no congregation nearby.  Now, I am part of a loving community.  I realized that it was all right to ask for help.  I thought about our mourning traditions around shiva and shloshim.  I became aware that these traditions served as a model for those who were facing medical challenges.

I decided that I would take seven days after the surgery to rest and recuperate, and remind myself that I was not obligated to do everyday tasks.  I was going to plan for quiet and rest.

I was further going to listen to my surgeon when he told me that it could take a month for me to feel like myself.  I was going to say (and sing, as soon as I could!) healing prayers.  I would recite Modah Ani, to thank God for the miracle of my body and Elohai Neshama, to express thanks for the gift of my soul.

Why do I write this?

Because I would like to remind us all that Jewish tradition and our liturgy afford us ample opportunity to grieve as long as we feel our grief, to take the time we ourselves decide we need to heal, and to rely on the community to help take care of us.  I write this so that you know that I am grateful for your support, for your good wishes, and for your prayers.

One important Jewish tradition is to have a dedicated group of congregational members at the ready to organize and mobilize support for those of us in need. Heather Chait, as you all know, has just stepped forward to reform our Chicken Soup Committee. Its members might write cards, make calls, and help mobilize us all when our help is needed.  It’s not hard to write a get-well card or make a phone call to check on an elderly congregant or to use internet resources that help the congregation respond with meals or other services if someone is taken seriously ill.  Please join – we can all take a turn!

May we share in taking care of each other.  May we practice lovingkindess and patience.  May we be gentle with ourselves and others.

And may we say, “amen.”

Rabbi Barbara

She took it upon herself some years ago. She would hunt for information after every service, after every festival celebration, after every single congregational event.

Who had prepared and set up rooms? Who had decorated? Who was responsible for oneg? Who had stayed to clean and sort and put things in order before we left?

Then, she would call up each family, each individual. She would thank them personally.

“It’s so important,” she told me. “People need to be thanked. They need to be appreciated.”

Ruth Kingberg, once the head of the oneg committee in her congregation back up north, the matriarch of our congregation, the first up to dance and the first to offer a hug, is our role model. What she does is, in fact, so important.

What keeps folks going who are paid little to nothing for all they do for the congregation? Our appreciation.

What helps anyone feel that what he or she does is worthwhile? Our thanks.

What creates a sacred community, one committed to caring for one another in good times and bad? Mutual respect and support.

When was the last time you thanked someone in the congregation for what he or she did to create the good feeling and the sacred space we enjoy?

Our opportunities are everywhere. Why not express gratitude for a wonderful hagbah, when one of our own holds the Torah aloft with all three columns wide open and clear for us to see? Whoever is doing the heavy lifting that night would probably love to receive our appreciation.

What about thanking the children when they sing for us and help lead our prayers. What about acknowledging the harmonies now enriching our prayer experience?

What about thanking folks for the wonderful food they are bringing, for the physical labor of bringing in and setting up chairs and tables and taking them down long after most of us have left? What about thanking the teachers who sacrifice their month of Sundays (and then some) in education committee meetings, in creating lesson plans, in shopping for the kids? What about expressing our appreciation for those who help us organize opportunities for tikkun olam?

What about simply turning to each other and thanking the person next to you for showing up to make a minyan, for engaging in prayer with us, for asking about our family and work life?

Remember your Books of Life from the High Holy Days?

Here’s a suggestion: Think of people you could thank. Make a list in your book of all those people – all the people who are doing something to help keep Temple Or Olam going. Write an email. Send a card. Remember to pass your thanks along at the next oneg.

Ruth is right: It’s so important.

P.S. And while we are on the subject of thanks: Many thanks to Heather Chait for stepping up to lead our Chicken Soup Committee.  I didn’t expect to be the first recipient of her committee’s care, but I want to take the opportunity to thank her and all those who have been so kindly offering to help take care of us after my surgery next week.  Ralf and I are very grateful!

Dear Temple Or Olam Members,

Before you light the Hanukkiah tonight, please take a moment to grab some paper and a pencil.

Then, light the first candle.

Wait just a little to open the presents. First, take a few moment to engage in knowing, in recognizing, and – most importantly, to rededicating.

Watch the candle burn – it takes just thirty minutes. If children and family are near, sit with one another. The candle will flicker and hold, stretch and go small. The blue at the core gives way to gold. Light, offered through the thin wick, is fragile, tender.

What are your hopes? What are your dreams?  Talk to the children about theirs.

Reflect on the things that matter most to you, the things that remind you who you want to be. Name your needs.  Then, write them down in the form of blessings. “May I be blessed with…” “May I find…” “May I know…”

Collect your blessings and drop them in a bowl. Do this as often as you like – perhaps the first and final nights of Hanukkah. Perhaps every other night. Perhaps each night.

These are your extra Hanukkah gifts to yourselves.

Hanukkah means “rededicate.” It is a time of year to assess, to reflect, to rededicate ourselves to all the wishes made during High Holy Days, to remember that we made such wishes. At Yom Kippur, we asked the Holy One of Blessing to give us the chance to do better this next year, to receive the blessings of wisdom and insight, to be granted opportunities to give and to award ourselves the right to receive.

We dedicated ourselves then to the tasks of becoming better at the job of being human, of growing in our Jewish practice and of building and caring for our Jewish community.

Let us rededicate ourselves to understanding what it is we need, what gifts may be ours to give ourselves. When we grow and learn, when we care for ourselves and others, when we reach out to connect with our community, that is when we ourselves help create the blessings we ask for.

When Hanukkah is over, collect your blessings and glue them into your Books of Life, the ones everyone received at High Holy Days. Look at them, their covers filled with stars and glittery colors. Look at your early notes, at your prayers, at the poetry we read together.

Abracadabra. We create that which we name.

May the Holy One bless all of you this first night of Hanukkah with all that you hope for!

Rabbi Barbara

We’d sung happy songs and deeply moving prayers. We welcomed Shabbat in with Feelin’ Groovy and were moved (again), when our second oldest member, Ruth Kingberg, beckoned in the angels of peace by singing Shalom Aleychem. Mi Chamocha featured our new cowbell. Veshamru, the high and slender sound of the recorder.

Time for the drash, the story, the reflection.

The subject: Parsha Lech Lecha – particularly, Genesis 15. The content: Night visions, dreams, predictions, a covenant.

In the first of two nighttime encounters with the Divine, Abraham mourns his childlessness. God knows how that anguish haunts Abraham and makes him a promise of children. God commits to the Divine promise by invoking a ritual well-known to the Ancient Near East (though strange to us).

In that ritual, animals were sacrificed and the parties to the contract would walk between their divided parts. Should they violate their agreement, the punishment would be dire: They would end just as the animals beside them: cloven in two.

In this night vision, God Godself is the one who passes between the animal parts. It is God who must keep the promise. Abraham is merely to believe in it.

In the second night dream, God comes upon Abraham to foretell his descendants’ future. They will be enslaved for four hundred years before knowing freedom again. It is a dark vision, a vision of horror and pain.

Two visions, two dreams, two futures: Life with children to follow, to keep the memory of one’s short existence on the earth alive, to carry a good legacy. Then, the knowledge: We cannot make our children safe from the real world they belong to.

Whoever we love, whether attached to us biologically or not, these are the beloveds we long for, the souls we want to make safe. Those two night visions – the one of hope and the other of dread – they are both, in essence, about the power of human connections on this earth. They are about love.

That night, I also told a story about Adam and Eve. In that tale, they find life outside the Garden of Eden difficult, challenging, and painful. But when God offers them the chance to return to the Garden they flatly refuse – even though they are both old and exhausted from years of labor. They cannot bring themselves to leave their real lives behind. Not before they must, anyway. They refuse to leave their children, their memories, and their earthly experience for the happy forgetfulness of paradise. They reenter the real world, the world of earthly love.

I asked my congregants to imagine they stood before the gates of the Garden of Eden. Would they enter? Would they, too, refuse? If the latter, what was it that held them to the earth, to the real world?

Everyone had a card and a pen. They began writing.

After the service, one of our children showed me his card. He had written his name on the top: Caleb Malin. Next to it, he had drawn a Star of David, a tiny Torah scroll and, finally, our Temple Or Olam logo, the fiery letter shinn. Below he listed all the things he could not leave behind:

My dog my Parents my brother my gram my PaPa my Granmuther my ante my uncl my rabis my cusens my Grandfather my ont.

“Caleb,” I said, “this is absolutely beautiful!”

“Those are all the things I won’t leave behind,” he said. “Can I draw a picture, too?”

“Please!” I answered. “Let’s go find you another card.”

Later at the oneg, Caleb came by to show me his picture. I read the card again. “Caleb,” I asked, “I didn’t know you had two rabbis. Who is your other rabbi?”

“Mr. Ralf!” he said.

I laughed.

Mr. Ralf, of course, is my husband of almost thirty years. At every service, Ralf plays a range of instruments, from the darbuka, a Middle Eastern drum, to recorder, to (most recently) the cowbell.

Ralf has a calm and quiet soul. For seven years, he has done one task after another for our congregation, from creating earlier websites to designing our monthly Shmoozeletter to maintaining our data base to schlepping all the instruments and musical equipment and our Torah to every last service and to every last bar or bat mitzvah. He has comforted congregants and made them laugh. He is a beacon.

No rabbi could do more.

I cannot bear the idea of leaving Ralf behind. Were the Holy One of Blessing to offer me Paradise, I would refuse it – even if the cost was that I would never see it at all and would have given up, say, one little minute with Ralf.

God would not ask such a thing, I think. God would know that my longing is to be with Ralf, with my beloved family and friends as long as I can be, just as God knew that Abraham longed for those he needed to love to live – Ishmael and Isaac. The real world, with all its pain and sorrows, with all its frustrations and disappointments, contains our dreams.

Perhaps there will come a time when I am ready to go. Maybe I will feel that way someday, though it seems so impossible to me now.

But if and when God or Paradise beckon and welcome me, may they do so only after I have made it clear that my dreams, like Abraham’s, were about the love I bore for those I loved while I was on this earth.

Shabbat Shalom.

Dear All,

I want to thank you all for the most extraordinary Rosh Hashanah services we ever had.  Congregants and guests are still talking to me about the glow from the music, the song, the prayer, the drashot and the kavannot.  The energy in the room was amazing.  Clearly, we are headed for a year blessed with hope and enthusiasm.  We also thank Hazzan Katya Gohr for her many wonderful contributions!

Most of you have your Books Of Life at home now with the prayers I wrote for you all and many of you have, during Erev Rosh Hashanah, added your first prayer of the year to its pages.  For those so inclined, please take these days before Yom Kippur to do some journaling about your hopes and prayers for our community.  Visit our virtual shtetl!  Please bring the books back with you on Yom Kippur; we will be doing a meditation that may result in some writing possibilities.

Important reminder: Temple Or Olam is going to be participating in this year’s CROP WALK to raise money to feed the hungry.  Linda VanArsdale is leading our team and you can join her and others by clicking on the link below and making contributions and/or walking alongside her on October 16th.  Please join us !

L’shana tova to you all!

Rabbi Barbara Thiede

http://www.churchworldservice.org/site/TR/2011FallCROPHungerWalk/TR-Fall2011?fr_id=13655&pg=teamlist&pr_id=donate